Here are some beach photos. We went to the beach a couple of days before Legoland – we were intending on doing other things in between, but Iain and Niall and I needed a couple of days to recover from the third degree (ie blistering) sunburns we acquired through SPF 50 sunscreen. Pasty white northerners, indeed.
Here’s Stuart making sand angels:
Our hosts, Ann, Dave, and Jonathon:
And other assorted beach pics:
Legoland was truly awe inspiring – the miniland part, anyway. They had lego models of real buildings, and trees bonsaied to scale. My internet connection is slow as moleases in January, but I have a few pics to share. More as I can.
I am a sucker for cute. Geoffrey and Stuart are now the proud owners of two straw cowboy hats, two pop gun rifles (the old fashioned kind with the cork on the end that goes POP when you shoot them), and two stick ponies that are just their size. Iain and Niall were playing “Sherrif and bad guys” with them, including Deputy Sherrif Stuart sharply attired in hat, gun, tee shirt, pony and diaper. Giddy up!
Sorted out the picture problems – here’s cowboy Geoffrey:
We went to the Grand Canyon today. It is something everyone should do at least once, if you can. Words can’t describe it, and pictures on a computer screen wouldn’t do it justice either, I suspect, you just have to be there. I heard more languages spoken today in one place than I have in a long time.
Besides the sheer beauty, and amazment at the persistance of life (plants and trees growing in entirely inprobable places), what struck me was the number of peopple trying to nominate themselves for a Darwin award by climbing onto the very edge of cliff faces to get the perfect photograph. Honestly, some of them were being so reckless I couldn’t even watch. There was one lookout that was basically a path to a rock edge. The edge had barriers, but the path didn’t. Yikes! Stuart was very put out by my (successful, I hasten to add) efforts to keep him from taking the 15 second tour. What is the 15 second tour of the Grand Canyon? The one that takes you Straight Down.
It really is breathtakingly beautiful.
Pics,finally:
I forgot a couple of things about Louisana. We stopped at a little lunch place called Lea’s Lunch, that had been around since the 30’s. It had a lovely little reading corner, with a rocking chair. It is a real mom and pop place – we had the obligatory red beans and rice. We also bought some clothes for the little kids at a shop called Tee Wee. The lady who served us was of the generation whose parents spoke French when they didn’t want the kids to know what they were saying, and who were punished for speaking French at school. She said more people are learning now, though. We saw ads for French language circles in the local paper. I missed the ladies knitting circle by a day.
We drive to the campsite near the Grand Canyon today. Onward!
I seem to be over my upload limit on flickr, so you will have to be content with descriptions till July.
The battleship was amazing. It is huge – litterally a floating gun. I loved looking at where the crew slept and imagining my father in similar circumsances. What really struck me was the Korean war memorial, because there was a canadian flag on it, and a short description of Canada’s role in that war. The Americans still insist that WWII started in 1941, though.
Louisana was HOT and humid. Honestly that’s about all I remember, except for spotting lizards in the wild, and finding a terrific local bakery that sold beignets. Yum.We also saw the Evangeline oak, and I took some pictures of it, and the monument/park that surrounds it.
Next, we drove to Texas,and went to church at Christ Church, Plano. What a beautiful place – spiritually, I mean. There were eight baptisms that Sunday, which was a treat. The place is huge, but friendly, for all that. It only took about five or ten minutes of looking confused before someone approached us and spoke to us. They even have a bookstore, which I didn’t resist. The sprit of God is certainly there.
Then we drove some more in Texas. And then some more. And then some more. We are in Amirillo, and it is windy and cool. I’m sitting with my laptop outside writing this, as the internet signal is too weak to reach our site, but it is very pleasant. We saw miles and miles of open fields, with a tree here and there. I don’t know if they have had a harvest of something already, but there doesnt seem to be a whole lot of green, mostly scrub and grazing cows. It is a beautiful place in a stark way. I’m seeing all kinds of birds I’ve never seen before, (and hearing them too, of course). I saw one bird this morning with a very long thin forked tail, which seemed to be hunting mice or bugs – striking like a hawk would. Tomorrow, we will have nine hours in the car, and the day after we will see the Grand Canyon. I am keeping a paper scrapbook, getting pictures printed on the way, so if you are in Ottawa, you will see that, eventually. Hopefully I will be able to get photographs up soon, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to upload photos directly to wordpress without using flickr as an intermeidary.
More in day or two, I hope.
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Friday, June 13
Lots to talk about today. We spent the 11th and the 12th at our friends’ Deborah and Kurt’s farm in Alabama. We had a delightful time.
Here are some pictures of the kids on the way to the farm:
On the way, we visited the Saturn 1B rocket in Huntsville, AL:
When we arrived at Deobrah and Kurt’s farm, we were greeted by the Lovely Lilly:
She is much too friendly to be a watch dog In fact, one of the first things she did was roll over to have her tummy rubbed. I’m told that the foxes are scared of her, though!
Stuart and Geoffrey wasted no time in finding the swing set:
The pools were a big attraction to us wimpy unused to the heat northerners. Niall saw a green anole lizard on the pool deck Here’s a picture of the big kids, (and one little kid) having fun in the big pool:
…and of the little kids (and one big kid) having fun in the little pool:
Deborah and Kurt also helped me figure out how my Hitchhiker spinning wheel is supposed to work (hurray) and sent us off with as much produce from her HUGE garden as our teeny tiny fridge would allow.I don’t know when she sleeps, she homeschools two kid, has a toddler, and the abovementioned huge garden. I’ve seen smaller marked gardens. She’s even growing sugarcane. She was also highly amused that I took a picture of her weeds. What weeds? Tomatillo plants! In Ottawa, people plant tomatillo seeds and carefully baby the plants In Alabama, they are weeds!
We packed lots of fun into two days. Deborah and Kurt are wonderful people, and I hope we can visit again (maybe in the winter, though.)
We had other suprises – the check engine light came on, and the water pump in the trailer is leaking, so we are hauling water till we can find a dealership.
From Deborah and Kurt’s farm, we visited a WWII battleship, and then spent two very damp days in Louisana. I have more pics to share, but there is a lineup for the computer. More later!
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The Big Trip – Day One – June 8, 2008
Even though my computer says that it is connected to the internet, somehow or other this little laptop doesn’t think that it is connected to the internet, so I am writing this on Open Office in the hopes that, eventually, I will find a wireless hotspot that my computer will actually talk to and be able to upload it.
Today we drove from Ottawa to the KOA in Erie, PA. The kids were very well behaved, once Stuart got used to being in the car for so long. No photos, unfortuately, because the batteries for my camera were in the closed up tent trailer, and I seem to have forgotten the memory stick at home – and Bill forgot his whole camera at home.
One funny story – where I come from, we call insect repellent “bug juice’. Well, in New York, there is a sickenly sweet kid’s drink called Bug Juice. (Cut half and half with water it tastes like regular Kool Aid. When G____ heard I_____ and N_____ talking about what the drink was called, we heard “BUG JUICE?? I’ve been drinking BUG JUICE???”
June 9, 2008
Today we drove from Erie, PA to Bowling Green, KY. We had lunch at Crackerbarrel, and I understand why it is Lisa M-E’s favourite restaurant. We will be going there again, I expect.
As we were pulling off the road in KY to find something to eat, we heard a weird sound. At first, we thought that the hitch chains were dragging. We got out of the car to check, and they were fine. We opened the door, and Bill said “It’s crickets!” Once the door was opened, the sound was like a set of maraccas on a loudspeaker. “Not crickets, cicadas!” said N_____, as I then realized what the enormous moth that had hit our windshield really was.
Still no photos. The memory card we bought for my camera didn’t work. Maybe tomorrow.
I’m climbing laundry mountain and trying to think of car amusements for small children and tweens in preparation for this:
There’s only one word to describe it: AAAARGH!
